An Empirical Study On The Cultivation Of Oral English Ability For Senior Students Majoring In Music

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the appropriateness and efficacy of using oral English activities based on Multiple Intelligence of the learners'for cultivating English oral ability specifically for senior students majoring in music.According to the musical specialty and English level of senior students majoring in music, the research focuses on helping students grasp knowledge in four areas: grammar, discourse, pragmatic and strategic knowledge in order to make up for their lack of basic knowledge, and to lay the foundation of the development of oral English ability. The research takes the relevant studies at home and abroad as references and analyzes the main factors affecting the development of Chinese students'oral English ability. On this basis, the research designs four kinds of teaching activities which combine with professional features of senior students majoring in music, to stimulate their interest in participating in oral English practice and develop their oral English ability. In this regard, an experimental teaching program is conducted in the research and the design of oral English activity is directed by Multiple Intelligence Theory. Combing with students'musical specialty, these four kinds of activities are selected: musical intelligence activity, linguistic intelligence activity, kinesthetic intelligence activity and interpersonal intelligence activity. The forms of activities are: singing English songs, reading English rhymes, retelling English story and English role play. Singing English songs and reading English rhymes focus on phonetic improvement and pattern drilling. Retelling English story mainly helps students enhance their textual narrative ability. And role play tends to cultivate students'abilities of using English to do things and using emotion in communication.The research attempts to seek for the answers to the following questions: 1). Can the new teaching activity stimulate students'interest in learning oral English? 2) Can the new teaching activity improve students'oral ability? 3) Can the new teaching activity enhance the students'enthusiasm of participating in oral English class? This thesis adopts experimental method. Sixteen-week English teaching experiment is conducted in Music School of Yueyang City. The freshmen of two classes in this high school are selected as the subjects of the research. The author as the instructor of the teaching experiment organizes a pretest and a posttest for 60 participants involved in this research. By collecting and analyzing the data of the tests, the researcher has found out that new teaching activity is effective in improving students'oral ability. And it can stimulate students'interest in learning oral English and enhance students'enthusiasm of participating in oral English class.